The PayPal Presidency Pt. I: Biotech and Biosurveillance with Max Jones

effort to reorder the US government take shape. Many Trump supporters are related, arguing that true changes come, that corruption and fraud are being rooted out, and that the quote, unquote Deep State is being dismantled before our eyes, while a dismantling of government infrastructure, some more controversial than others, is certainly happening, few of the cheerleaders are taking the time to consider what may be erected in its place, and if it will really manifest in

something better than the previous system. Part of the reason for this disinterest, perhaps lies in the celebrity status of many in the big tech clique that is shaping this demolition of old structures and the erecting of new ones that click, often referred to as the PayPal Mafia, have carefully crafted a public image of libertarianism with a few exceptions, and through their significant patronage of so called independent media, have successfully manufactured trust

among many long time and also Recent Trump voters, with some calling these former PayPal employees, quote, unquote, our elites behind this carefully crafted image lies something different, however, from CIA linked companies like Palantir expanding their role at the core of the mass surveillance state to the PayPal mafia's long standing ambition to create a quote, unquote, new world currency, many of the same policies that once recently incensed the right are cited to

now be implemented by this faction of big tech who have cloaked themselves in free market in America. First rhetoric to explore this reality, the Unlimited Hangout podcast is beginning its first ever series entitled the PayPal presidency to explore the way in which the PayPal Mafia is molding government policy, as well as some of the often overlooked ambitions of its members. In this first installment, we will look at this group's ambitions for

healthcare and biotechnology. Many Trump voters this cycle embraced the quote, unquote, make America healthy again, or MAHA movement, which initially supported a rejection of the experimental biotech products rolled out during the COVID era, as well as a desire to extricate government health care

regulation from the pharmaceutical industry. While it appears that MAHA de facto champion, Robert F Kennedy is slated to become of HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department is poised to approve a slate of experimental products via deregulation, to introduce bio surveillance regimes that would result in mass bio data mining and to expand Palantir's Already massive and invasive contracts with HHS joining me to discuss this and more is Max Jones, who

was written and co-written several recent Unlimited Hangout investigations covering these very topics. In addition to contributing to Unlimited Hangout. Max is the producer for Chris Hedges, the Chris Hedges report and the staff writer and Video Producer for sheer Post, thanks for joining me today, Max, and welcome to Unlimited Hangout. Thanks for having me.

Whitney, well, it is my pleasure, and I guess we could start up this discussion talking about the MAHA movement itself, how it was an important part of getting Trump elected, at least, you know, that's the perception anyway, and how a lot of the initially stated goals that injected a lot of energy into that movement have gradually been moved largely since the

Kennedy endorsement of Trump several months ago. So as I noted earlier, a lot of the initial focus of MAHA was around taking big pharma, the pharmaceutical industry, out of government, healthcare regulation, ending the so called revolving door, which was a big focus of Robert F Kennedy's campaign, and some of his work prior and definitely something he voiced extensively on his podcast, and also a rejection of COVID era policies that including the military, military

run operation warp speed initially launched during the first Trump administration. And also the experimental biotech products, the namely the mRNA vaccines, that were produced downstream of Operation warp speed and became, you know, obviously a source of great controversy for a lot of people in this particular movement. But it seems like a lot of the MAHA ambitions, at least if you're following what the influencers in this movement are saying, seems to have changed. Have you

noticed that as well? Yeah,

lot of it, which was very valid. And when you look at our case, actual initial agenda that was then associated with Make America healthy again, it was built on this kind of like liberal promise to use regulatory power to curb the influence of big pharma and big food and, you know, some of the things that and in a pretty moderate way, I think that, like in previous election cycles, if it was coming from a more traditional like Democratic Party figure that wasn't

associated with conservatives via COVID. I'm guessing most liberals would probably support like one of the things that he wanted to do, aside from the increasing regulations and making the clinical trials for vaccines more rigorous, were things like stopping advertising on TV from big pharma, which is something that's like pretty widely accepted among the Democratic Party constituency, I believe. But, you know, partisan politics kind of brain rots everything. So there's this

weird distortion with RFK. And so while RFK is an initial agenda was built on this kind of promise to use regulatory power to curb the influence of these industries, there's been this shift, and that kind of grew out of, as we note in the article, out of the shuttering of his campaign and his association

with Trump and RFK. Endorsement of Trump, in my opinion, was pretty important, because the Trump campaign, I think, realized this time around that the populist element of Trump was what was going to give them the victory against the Democrats, which were very much associated with the establishment, and RFK kind of granted them this tinge of

populism through his association with Trump. And now we see, I mean, just like recently with these hearings, RFK is starting to really back away from these initial promises to use regulatory power to do things like increase the rigorousness of clinical trials on vaccines and re examining the childhood vaccine mandates. And like just one tidbit that I saw on the New York Times the other day that like shows this. So in order to move forward in his confirmation to lead HHS, RFK, secured the

endorsement of Senator Bill Cassidy. And Cassidy has obvious ties to Big Pharma and vaccine development like so. And by the way, the way that he secured this endorsement, according to the Times, was by extracting a series of commitments from Kennedy. Cassidy did. And Cassidy's largest donors are from pharma and healthcare companies, like his second largest contributor was, contributor was actually from

Ochsner health system. If I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, but it's spelled out, O, C, H, s, N, E, R, and they actually, during the pandemic, increased insurance costs for their employees with unvaccinated spouses during the

pandemic. And r k allegedly promised this guy, Cassidy, that he was going to give Congress advance notice of any changes he might make in vaccine policy, so that, among other comments that RFK made, which you can which you can describe for the audience, really show RFK shifting away from this initial agenda that I think really helped Trump cultivate a lot of those COVID era dissidents, despite being The government that actually initiated a lot of this policy, like Operation warp

policies stated there. Obviously he'd experienced a lot more resistance if he were to pursue stuff he said, you know, back when he was on the campaign trail, for example. But again, it remains to be seen, I think, to an extent, with RFK as HHS Secretary. But I think there have been some revealing statements even before and reports even before his

confirmation hearing. So one of these was a Wall Street Journal article that's from January 14, so a little almost a month ago, and it's entitled Trump team sidelines, RFK juniors, anti

vaccine aides. And essentially that article, citing people close to both Trump and Kennedy, says that Kennedy was sort of dumping a lot of his people close to him that were expected to serve as AIDS if he were appointed to HHS that he had affiliations with, from children's health, defense, from example, in favor of, well, it seems like he didn't really pick his staff, actually. So one of these would be that his chief of staff is Heather flick, who was picked by Trump, who was per.

Previously involved with Alex Azar's HHS, which was Trump, Trump's first term. And you know, was the HHS that have first declared COVID a health emergency, and oversaw a lot of the creation and implementation of Operation warp speed before Biden came into office. And so there is a section in this article that basically, and I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially said something to the effect that he was going to not pursue changes to vaccine policy because it instead was

going to focus on wins and food and exercise. And it's interesting that that report came out when it did, because in the months prior to that, sort of these several influential

figures. Now, influential figures sort of seem to come out of nowhere after the Kennedy endorsement of Trump, namely the mean siblings Callie and Casey means and started promoting a lot of this, the stuff about sort of blaming chronic the chronic disease epidemic, as it's been referred to, in which I agree with the nomenclature there as being, you know, pretty much entirely due to big food and but only specific aspects of

things in big food. I don't think biotech, you know, GMOs and the food supply were necessarily, have been really addressed meaningfully by the mean siblings, but have sort of focused on the unhealthy standard American diet, and sort of this promotion of things like beef tallow, among other things, which you know is, is fine either I'm not, certainly not criticizing, you know, those claims, but I think it's sort of an effort to engineer a more myopic stance for MAHA so that

it's easier to secure those quote, unquote wins for the movement, and sort of act like campaign promises so that coalition were fulfilled, while avoiding the ones that involve removing industry influence from HHS and the FDA, for example, and anything that would have to do with sort of taking mRNA products off the market or making it more difficult to get on the market, right?

guys, eyes and ears within the department too. She's a very important liaison and information source, source, the chief of staff, they kind of lay down the law. So like that implies that there is this effort from within the Trump camp to basically subvert Kennedy's more radical agenda, I guess you could say, and it sounds like a babysitter, yeah,

exactly. And that makes you know that might be surprising to a lot of people that are, you know, follow these like Matt hat or MAGA influencers that kind of just don't really cover this stuff. But when you look at the people that are actually very

heavily affiliated with Trump, it's not that surprising. Like, for example, example, the most obvious one is probably like Peter Thiel, who, you know was, is pretty much entirely responsible for the rise of JD Vance's entire political career, and also started his private sector career in venture capital. And I mean, Peter Thiel is the founder and the largest

currently the largest shareholder of Palantir. And Palantir right now has a contract with the CD has multiple contracts with HHS and the CDC, which is a sub agency of this HHS, to basically build up this entire bio surveillance infrastructure across across the country, to basically feed data from the local level to the federal level, a steady stream of bio data to constantly develop pandemic and disease outbreak Forecast, to then allow the CDC to correspondingly

provide curated policy for communities based on their outbreak potential or outbreak status or whatever. And so obviously, like something like that, is very heavily associated with these mRNA, the procurement of mRNA and biotechnology products, as we saw during COVID 19, like you reported, I think, initially in the last American vagabond, about how Google and Oracle were according to, I think, one of the operation warp

speed heads. I don't know if this was actually like, if the contracts were ever

Kennedy. And this, this incentive from Kennedy so in order to secure the position to, like, basically distance himself from his initial policy agenda. It actually makes a lot of sense.

also Clarium capital, which is now Thiel Capital. And obviously at Mithril, he was JD Vance's boss, I guess, where, you know, significant investments in biotech and also in Palantir were made so Jim O'Neill. And as you can read our article on this, for all the nitty gritty details. He essentially has been arguing for quite some time for the end, ending of efficacy

testing of products at, I guess the FDA specifically. He was actually floated to be FDA head under the first Trump administration, and was considered too controversial for that role. I can't remember if Balaji Srinivasan, who's the Andreessen Horowitz partner that created the network state idea.

He was also pitched to be head of FDA, but was also deemed too controversial, and then they settled, I guess, on Scott Gottlieb, who became kind of infamous during the COVID era for his revolving door relationship with Pfizer and also the CIA linked company that's now doing all the bio manufacturing for this, a lot of the mRNA vaccines. It's called resilience, I think previously was called National resilience,

that I reported on some few years ago. But essentially, Jim O'Neill, by eliminating efficacy tests, would facilitate a lot of these products getting on the market, because, as a lot of my past reporting and reporting of others has noted about these mRNA products, and what was even known about them before the COVID 19 event. Basically, you can either make them safe but

not effective, or toxic and effective. It's kind of like the slider where you either get one or the other, and that makes it, of course, very difficult for them to get through the existing regulatory paradigm at the FDA. And as we noted just a minute ago, a lot of what was the initial ambition, at least publicly expressed, of the of this MAHA movement was about more stringent clinical testing for these types of experimental

products. Because, of course, a lot of the controversy around what happened during COVID 19 is that, you know, the emergency deregulatory paradigm was used to force this experimental biotech onto the market and onto the public. And basically the

people that took it became guinea pigs. And this is when you can, when you consider that, for 10 years, Moderna, and you know, Pfizer's bio in tech, but you know, they couldn't get anything on the market, because they couldn't even get through animal trials, you know, all of a sudden they can get on the market and they're,

trials sometimes because of these problems, right? And like, like, some of these companies that he's worked for have existed for like, over a decade, and they have no products brought to market, just like moderna before the COVID 19 pandemic, and they were, yeah,

livestock. You know, there's been a lot of talk about mRNA products already being with the livestock. I guess there are cases where it does get through animal trials for animal vaccines, but I have a feeling that animal vaccine tests.

Testing is a lot less stringent than it is for humans. And I don't know Well, I'm kind of I think it's interesting this whole ending efficacy testing paradigm, because, of course, it's being framed as a way to remove needless regulation and bureaucratic red tape and to make way for free market innovation. And these are, you know, kind of the standard

Republican talking points here. But obviously what happened during COVID 19 was a removal, technically right, of that bureaucratic red tape, and it sort of unleashed a very corrupt pharmaceutical industry, or wing of it, rather, in biotech, to have no liability for these experimental products and have them used massively and to reap massive profits from them. And of course, now that's been pitched as the US government

would share in those profits. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in the press conference announcing the creation of a new US sovereign wealth fund, commented how the US would begin

buying equity and and these types of vaccine companies. So that when you know COVID 19 vaccines, for example, are sold abroad, the US government, you know, has a direct financial incentive, which is pretty telling, I think, of where this administration plans to go with mRNA, and I think also the some of the controversial statements made by Oracle's Larry Ellison at the Stargate press press conference on Trump's first day in the White House about this new era of AI powered

personalized mRNA vaccines for cancer. You know, a lot of these mRNA companies that got, you know, sort of looked at by independent media during COVID, a lot of them have been focusing on cancer specifically for a long time, because you can basically charge more because you're making a personalized vaccine for each person. There's been a push for this. It was arguably one of the reasons that Biden created the ARPA-H the

health DARPA agency, which he framed as a cancer moonshot. A lot of it was framed around this very same idea that is being promoted on day one of the Trump White House, which is quite telling, and importantly, ARPA-H

technology came out of DARPA funding. A lot of it happening under the Obama administration there DARPA. And since then, you know, the head of the director of DARPA, when those initial investments in mRNA were made, was, is Regina Dugan, and she has since become head of the Welcome Trust, own DARPA equivalent, called Welcome leap, that I reported on a few years

ago. So, you know, it's, it's notable, I think that this is set to expand in the US under the current administration, because a lot of the same entities that were vilified during COVID, and I think were rightly vilified personally, whether that's the Wellcome Trust or Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are all in on biotech and really see it as necessary to expand, you know, their ambitions for global health, and you know, the health related Sustainable Development

Goals, which I've argued, you know, in my work on the SDGs, is really about creating new markets, and using public policy to impose those markets on people, because there's no actual demand for the products of these markets that they're making, and that kind of, you know, I think maybe kind of similar to what ends up happening here, you know, it's ultimately, you know, maybe the sales pitches are different, or the way it's being marketed is going to be different, you know,

under Trump. But ultimately, having this, the having this type of experimental biotechnology be all over the market, and it's used to be normalized, I think, is definitely something that we can expect over the next four years, unfortunately. And I think another indicator of this, in addition to sort of these quote, unquote babysitters that are

actually going to be running the show for our. RFK, you know, he's nominally the head, but Heather flick, as Chief of Staff, decides who gets access to him, what his schedule is, what he does as HHS Secretary, basically. And then Jim O'Neill being basically the person who manages day to day operations and oversees the FDA and all these sub agencies on Kennedy's behalf, there is a lot of room to go against Kennedy, even if Kennedy was intent on challenging biotech as head of

HHS. And as you noted earlier, it's not necessarily clear that is the case, but I don't want to come out and say it's not a possibility. But you know, I'm not very enthusiastic about the prospects at the moment, but I don't want to necessarily say I know for a fact what his plans are. But another figure that sort of points to this, in addition to the people at HHS, the Larry Ellison statements, the Lutnick statements, is the

guy who's slated to be head of the FDA himself. So that's Marty Makary, or Martin Makary, who's a top guy at Johns Hopkins, I believe, and he became a pretty popular recently. He was, like, on promoted a lot to Trump's base, I think before he was announced to be FDA head, going on, like the Megyn Kelly show. I

think he even has his own podcast. But he definitely was a frequent guest on a lot of podcast circuits, and, you know, sort of talking about, using a lot of the MAHA buzz words about, you know, chronic health epidemic and all of that, but it's his tech, his stance on biotech, I think, has sort of been overlooked by a lot of these influencers in the Make

America healthy again movement. And I think that was pretty clearly portrayed, not just by the the reporting on industry reactions to his appointment as charge of the FDA, but also the boost in stocks for biotech that Makary announcement elicited.

So of course, you know, there have been reports saying every time like a you know, Kennedy's is advancing toward getting confirmed, there's a dip in vaccine stocks, but the opposite seems to be true for Marty Makary, who has been was considered, is considered very friendly to the biotech industry by the people that run that industry to the so much to the point that some have said they dodged a bullet with his appointment, which I think is notable, and as we noted in our

article, his statements during COVID 19, he was very unhappy with it taking multiple weeks for the COVID 19 vaccines to be approved under the emergency use paradigm at the FDA. He argued it should have happened in less than 24 hours. So that's sort of, you know, combined with how biotech feels about him, and that that COVID stance under that particular deregulatory paradigm, it seems like he'd be pretty supportive of the vision

that people like Jim O'Neill hold. And I don't think I made it explicit earlier, and I probably should have, but Jim O'Neill's interest in eliminating efficacy tests isn't necessarily to eliminate all efficacy data collection. He thinks that data collection should take place after people take the drug, and she should be conducted via bio surveillance.

And as we note in the article, there are a lot of people that he cites as sort of his, I guess mentors, in a sense, in developing this view, who argue that that should happen through a variety of means and have a variety of outcomes. I don't know if you'd be interested in speaking to that Max, yeah,

well, it was notorious. Seems like no one cares anymore, at least in the mainstream media, about eliminating efficacy tests. He's actually been interested in this deregulatory paradigm since his time at HHS, I think, with Tommy Thompson and Mike Leavitt, where he was notably very close in proximity to the centers of power that developed this initially made a huge step, a significant step towards this deregulatory

paradigm. And you talked about creating artificial like, basically manufacturing artificial demand for these markets that no one really wants. O'Neill was arguably, well, I don't, I don't want to comment on how crucial of a role he played, but he was certainly very close in proximity to the centers of power, the at the HHS that were crucial in getting the BARDA pass, the project bioshield act of 2004 which.

Implemented, or created the BARDA agency, and that then led to them purchasing all of these Tamiflu stockpiles, as you noted in the article, which kind of caused Gilead stock prices to, I think, as you noted, quadruple right when it when it had dipped before.

would be like, you know, between 2004 and 2006 right? And you know, he was fresh off the controversy in Britain, where he helped use similar doomsday statistic modeling of dubious credibility as a part of the government response to a mad cow disease outbreak, which led to the unnecessary culling of an insane amount of livestock in Britain and very negatively

impacted their farming industry. Um, but basically, you know, as we learned during COVID 19, it's very possible to manufacture uh, fear, using statistics and using quote, unquote experts in the events of real in the absence of real clinical data showing the

same. And by doing so, you know, you create this threat, and Congress can express outrage, or, you know, the media drums up concern, Congress responds, and BARDA ends up buying a bunch of stockpiles of medication, often billions of dollars worth from pharmaceutical companies, of things that will be used to

respond to this doomsday event that doesn't exist yet. And that stockpile, you know, was justified initially by the 2001 anthrax attacks we need it was pushed for back as a policy response to that before project bioshield was even introduced in Congress, this idea that there's going to be bio terror events. I mean, that was back, you know, this is back in the War on Terror era. So that's initially how they sold it. But eventually, you know, moved the idea of sort of a zoonotic

pandemic, and needing to sort of stockpile. And so the stockpile since then has sort of been to to address both of those threats, and has often been used, you know, by companies of to basically boost companies of, you know, dubious credibility, like emergent bio solutions, who created the anthrax vaccine that was never properly tested and does not work and has been linked to Gulf War Syndrome, among other things, and was actually being given to military personnel and used in an off

label way to the point where they lost in court and had to stop giving it to people until, you know, people like Jerome Hauer came in and saved the day. We can talk about Jerome Hauer another time, but if you're interested in learning more about him and weird things about him at 911 you can read my few years old series called engineering contagion, about

those attacks and how a lot of this came to be. But basically, the people that created that infrastructure were also the people that led early COVID response, like Robert Catholic, for example, who was Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response under the first Trump administration. He helped author project bioshield, develop the idea for BARDA. I was very close to the click that I argue in my series actually committed the 2001 anthrax attacks. There's no way it was actually Bruce Ivans.

Anyway, getting a little off topic, but basically, you know, it was basically a way to create welfare for Big Pharma and to manufacture fear for the purpose of basically creating markets for products people don't need or want, and using fear to do so. And also, at the same time, it's, you know, a dual use, in a way, because fear is also routinely used to take away

people's civil liberties. So it's a way to get people to surrender bodily autonomy in one way, and also a way to get civil liberties, as many of them acts as possible for the benefit of the national security state. And I think, you know, COVID, 19 years after, you know, bioshield was passed, was definitely quite revealing and how, that's how these things tend to work. So, you know, Jim O'Neill's proximity to that, I think, is worth pointing out. And as we note in the article, he was the

main speech writer for Tommy Thompson. And leave it when a lot of this fear mongering about bird flu was going on and when project bio shield was being peddled to Congress. And he, you know, notes in his own CV that he was very involved with Pan. Academic response and writing speeches on pandemic influenza, which in this case refers to the bird flu speeches, and then subsequently went on to lead, you know, various, not the same type of role he'll be having now as number two, but definitely a

top tier HHS executive level position later on. So he definitely had a lot of clout within the the Bush administration's HHS, and it seems like a lot of that deregulatory vision that was, you know, characteristic of the Bush era is likely to make a comeback, even with someone like RFK as the public face of the agency, yeah,

teams of Tommy Thompson and Mike Lee, a bit. And he actually even brags about, in that same talk, where he says that we need to eliminate efficacy tests, how he actually blocked the FDA from starting to regulate this one biotechnology anyway, is Yeah, and, and one thing that the mainstream media reports that talked about that a couple years ago, that speech that he gave where he advocated eliminating eliminating efficacy tests, they didn't mention was that he then goes on to praise the work of

this guy named Richard Barker, who's the founding director of CASMI, and his model of adaptive licensing. And I think that Barker's model is worth noting because I think it clues us into what O'Neill wants to do, and also this kind of biotech, deregulatory slash surveillance paradigm in general. Really

And this issue is that those handling clinical development, so, you know, in my opinion, at least in the way that I think drug development should work, the people that are, you know, in theory, in the best form of capitalism or whatever, should not be concerned with the commercial interests of the drug they're creating, and instead should be concerned with, you know, things like, is it does it work? Is it going to help save

lives or treat people's sicknesses or whatever? He says that they actually need to, that they're too separated from the commercial side, and that they actually need to be that big pharma and the people that are more concerned with the profits of those drugs need to be infused into the drug development process further, and he says that that should be done

via the collection of value data. He basically thinks that this should happen via the utilization and collection of a massive amount of real world data, and that's data accumulated outside of clinical trial settings, like, you know, through electronic health records, maybe your apple, watch, your phone, wearables, yeah, and then, you know, and again, like, this is important to know, because regarding the MAHA movement, because RMK Jr's agenda is like The exact, I

mean, at least the agenda that he was, you know, touting on the campaign trail is like the exact opposite of what this guy, Barker, says. And, you know, so, like, here's a quote that from

from Barker himself. He says that they need to integrate value in the design of climate clinical development with an early crafting phase involving the input of regulators, payers and patient associations, so as to ensure the collection of both clinical and value data and and he literally advocates This is being a way to solve the problem of drug makers having to set the initial market value of their drug as being very high, and instead allow companies to basically, like, test the value

of their drug by through these real world data sources, and then use that data to basically accrue or increase the value of the drug over time. AKA, basically just like, Jack up prices of drugs as they exist as they continue to exist on the market longer by using this, what he calls value data, which you know, for anyone listening, would be accumulated from your

devices and your labor, whatever you know. Your existence, basically, so like you know, Barker's literally advocating for Big Pharma to directly exploit data mined segments of people to cultivate capital and value for drug products with them getting nothing in return. And and then, you know, he goes even further, where he believes that, where he believes that patient populations should be segmented and surveilled to basically allow pharma to develop this outcome focused way of creating drugs.

people are going to hear this as, oh, well, that's great. They get to, you know, use my data, and then I get a better drug, because it's developed for me or something, or my population, people like me. But, I mean, he said that in pretty much every case that it's used to exploit the consumer and the worker and jack up prices and cut costs, and so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a possibility, or if that happens.

I mean, one thing that he said was that it's very it's very likely that these, this real world data, will also be used by insurance companies, for example, to charge higher premiums based on certain lifestyle habits that these that your wearables or your other devices might pick up on you. So he said, for example, like, oh, you know, you're only sleeping five hours a night, and that makes you X amount more likely to get this disease or this condition. Therefore you're not

taking care of yourself. So we can't really cover you, because look at the subjective data that we have that shows that you're not taking care of yourself. Why would we cover you? So yeah, I definitely think that's possible.

currently. So, you know, we got to develop a bunch of this drug and then, kind of like, hope that people need it to take it. I think an example of that might be the Tamiflu stuff, right? They had this drug and it seemed like there, maybe there wasn't so much demand for it, and then they needed to manufacture this artificial demand by instilling fear in the population and

selling this pitch about bird flu, et cetera. Yeah. So basically, this predictive outcome focused use of data would allow quote products to be prescribed and used by the right

patient segments. And then he goes further, and he says that we can also use this data that where we segment patients to focus on behavioral factors, so they're also now they don't just want to cultivate this data for health purposes or for drug development purposes, they also want to produce means of behavioral modification, because he says that the industry needs to focus on the behavioral factors which drive adherence, either as accelerators or decelerators. So

exercise is complex. It's there are many types of patients with different behavioral contexts and psychological barriers, which, which highlights the breadth of data that they're planning to collect on, on, on this specifically, this issue specifically. And, you know, I noted in the article that this concept of utilizing the data, these mass data sets, to basically manipulate human behavior and direct outcomes of

populations is like straight out of the military playbook. I mean, yeah, Phil bean surveillance Valley is basically about how the entire DARPA tech military apparatus was a counterinsurgency program from the very beginning, and you see that just being repurposed for different means, and, and, and, and the fact that a lot of this data that they want to collect

has dual use purposes. So like, for example, the same data that they're collecting on you via your Apple Watch about your health could also presumably be used to predict if you're going to shoot up a school or whatever,

And, yeah, so, I mean, I think that that's the gist on Richard Barker, and I think it really clues you into O'Neill's mindset on these things. And also, like, I just wanted to note too, because, I mean, it appears that they've really banked on exploiting RFK Jr, kind of like anti establishment Bona feeds to sell this stuff like so, for example, here's a tweet from Jim O'Neill where he's advocating this outcome focused version of drug development. He says, Many Americans think we have free

markets in health care. We don't hundreds of bureaucratic rules, perverse incentives and opaque pricing make health care more expensive and less efficient than it should be. Providers of care are usually paid by volume, not outcomes. So he's advocating for outcomes. And then he says this, And to me, this is the CO opting of the RFK make America healthy again, language, he says, and government makes chronic disease worse by subsidizing unhealthy food and offering poor nutritional advice

to families who are trying their best to stay healthy. So right there you have this deregulatory paradigm that conflicts directly with the most, I would say, the most important parts of RFK Jr's initial agenda that was associated with the Trump campaign on the campaign trail, that you have this language that exploits that radical agenda and associates it with this deregulatory paradigm, which is like, super manipulative to people that maybe don't stay up to date on all of this stuff

that much and don't have all the time to decipher all these things, or

Thiel affiliated BC. He was working for the sense Research Foundation, which is devoted to, like treating longevity related or like age related diseases. It's basically, I would argue, one of those sort of Silicon Valley Health, quote, unquote foundations that aims to offer life extension technologies. And, you know, a lot of big tech bros are kind of obsessed with

this idea of immortality. Probably the most infamous of those is Brian Johnson, and he, along with Peter Thiel, having a significant interest in injecting young people's blood into themselves to stay young, for example. That's true. And the sins Research Foundation is is focused on, you know, using biotech, including mRNA, DNA, DNA, vaccines and, you know, technology like that, in order to allegedly extend people's

lifespans, which is the sins Research Fund. Is also, you know, really exists thanks to the financing of Thiel as well. So it's no surprise that you have a lot of people affiliated with Thiel present there, like O'Neill, also Blake masters, who's sort of like a JD Vance type of Thiel creation, whose failed political career was also bankrolled by Thiel, and he was on the Sims Research Foundation with with O'Neill for some time. And they're focused on a lot of that type of, that kind of angle

of biotech as well. And I think it's fair to sort of look, I mean, people need to pay attention to a lot of the Silicon Valley big tech and Big Pharma overlap. You know, I've been covering it a lot since the COVID era, but basically there's been this effort, and you covered it in your piece about the who and permanent pandemic markets. This idea of traditional the traditional income model for Big Pharma, has basically run out of steam. It's been telegraphed openly by big

pharma itself. They refer to it as the patent Cliff issue, and so the way they want to get around patent cliffs, which is basically related to how products go generic, and they don't make as much money when they're not exclusive products of that farm, that pharmaceutical company, anymore, they've been going into biotech, and a lot of that is through joint ventures with big tech companies like Google, for

example. And you know, a lot of those companies also now double as major in essential parts of the national security state and national security state contractors and integral parts of the national security, you know, mass surveillance

apparatus. And so the idea of having a lot of this in this idea of selling bio surveillance and all of this as a way to improve, you know, market response to health care products and all of this stuff, I would argue, was really kind of a sly way to manufacture what I think is pretty openly acknowledged as the final frontier of mass surveillance, which is surveilling people's bodies through wearables and eventually

through things inside the body, nano medicines. And of course, I would put brain machine, brain computer interfaces, BCIs like Neuralink, in that category. And I think it's important to remember, too, with brain machine interfaces or BCIs, that it ultimately comes to the FDA to approve them. FDA tends to grant them breakthrough device status, which sort of waves some of the quote, unquote, regulatory red tape for these

things. But we have, you know, Elon Musk having a very prominent role in the government right now, he doesn't have to divest from any of his companies at all in that role, and neither does another PayPal Mafia figure who's now also now a special government employee, David Sacks the crypto AI czar. And as crypto AI czar, it's very possible he could partner with someone like O'Neill, who is also a very big advocate for AI

and healthcare, and see some of the stuff expanded as well. And I would definitely encourage people to pay attention to how this could potentially advance, because it has very Orwellian possibilities if they are collecting not just state our data from our external activities and our external environment. There's this really crazy push to surveil everything

and sort of mine all the data possible. You have companies tied to the current administration, for example, creating the internet of forests, trying to hook up every tree in the Amazon rainforest to mine biodata out of rain forest trees. It's, it sounds bonkers, but there you know that there's ambitions to do that to people as well, and create the so called Internet of bodies, which military contractors and think tanks like the RAND Corporation have been writing about for

years. And it's really not, I mean, I think up Purdue, or some other university like that, recently created a whole center dedicated to accelerating the development of the Internet of bodies. Silicon Valley has been pushing the wearable agenda for some time, and I think we could potentially see the push for that come through under the guise of health. Initially it was like, Look how cool google glasses are, and look at my VR

Apple helmet. And now I guess Facebook has made these like Ray Ban looking ones that they think will not look as insane on people.

vaccines. They're going to be personalized. They're going to have to do gather the testing data on you after you receive them. And they may not do the same method they did with COVID 19 with like blanket mandates, but it's very possible there will be some, some other type of coercive measure to try and get

people to adopt this. Because a big theme, whether it's healthcare or really anything else, like I mentioned earlier, in reference to the SDGs, is about creating new markets that will make, you know, this oligarch class very wealthy, and entrench their power and sort of lead to this Neo, futile, Neo

feudalism in society. And I think this is one of those, you know, ways they could do that, because the only way they can get people to want these products is to create, you know, use public policy as the enabling environment for these

markets, essentially. So it's kind of crazy, honestly, to see a lot of the mental gymnastics that have been used to sort of explain away the Stargate announcement or, let Nick's comment about buying the US government now, buying equity in COVID 19, mRNA vaccine companies, or any of the other things we've discussed today, even when our article came out on Jim O'Neill and his potential to undermine, you know, a lot of these early MAHA ambitions, you know, pretty much crickets from

a lot of the big influencers in that in that movement, which honestly, you know, is kind of telling in Its in itself as well, but also just allow a very little interest in addressing Palantir, really at all. And Palantir, of course, is a company that has expanded under every administration. It's a bipartisan, you know, it's the engine on which the quote, unquote, Deep State runs. But yet, no one in this administration, or, you know, it's, it's supporters. Really

wants to talk about Palantir, really, very much at all. And how many investors in Palantir, O'Neill included. But also, you know, people like Joe Lonsdale was a major donor to Trump. David Sacks is also an investor in Palantir. He's the crypto AI czar. And, of course, Peter Thiel co founded Palantir, and

Palantir has played an out. Has numerous contracts with the US military and other you know, all of every 18 intelligence all 18 of the US intelligence agencies also very involved in Ukraine, which Kennedy was a big critics of, as well as the genocide in Gaza, which RFK, of course, is not a critic of. But nevertheless, Palantir has become kind of ubiquitous today.

They also run a lot of the data for the British NHS National Health Service, and they also run it for HHS, which I know you covered recently on your piece about the Palantir run center for forecasting and outbreak analysis at the CDC, and I think that's worth covering a little bit here too, as we as we try and wrap up here to talk about sort of how, you know, a new paradigm, if there's a new quote, unquote public health emergency, how lockdowns or any of these other measures that

became infamous during COVID might be implemented, quote, unquote, more gently, as a way to make people think that, you know, there's been an improvement over past, you know, after post COVID, when, in reality, a lot of these same tactics that are sort of very probable in a Future pandemic scenario were really tested out during COVID to a significant extent. Yeah. And

eyes and like, it sounds ridiculous. Like, this is sci fi at this point, but like, so just for example, this center for forecasting and outlay, outbreak analytics, the Innovate they have this thing called the Innovate branch, and that's responsible for collaborating with, quote, academic, private sector and inter agency partners as part of its goal to create products, tools and enterprise enhancements in order to make pandemic data analysis flexible, fast and scalable for CFA

customers, including state, tribal, local authorities and right now, you know, take note of that line where it says that they're working with interagency partners to create products and tools and enterprise enhancements to make this data sharing more vast and flexible. We noted in our article on Jim O'Neill that that ARPA-H, that program that we mentioned earlier, that was initially a pre crime program, is actually.

Creating a device, or, I mean, so they commissioned four different teams to develop bio electronic devices to be implanted in patients through minor outpatient surgery. So that's literally from the ARPA-H website. That's not me talking. That's them, yeah, and one so, like one team is aiming to create a living Sentinel, is what they call it, to measure key biomarkers in the body and monitor their bodily conditions

in real time. And then all of the teams are aiming to develop an implantable, living pharmacy program to deliver therapeutic molecules to the patient on demand for an extended period. So okay, great, yeah, right there. So right there. So right there. You have this thing that's going to, I guess, automatically feed you these therapeutic, you know, maybe, maybe even

Because it's alive, it's not inert, and so you can generate a lot of data and have, I mean, the more, the more successful your AI will become, is determined by how much data it's feeding on, and also the quality of that data, right? So I think that's one of the incentives here. And again, I think people might sort of be ignoring brain machine interfaces at their own risk, because there are a considerable amount of ties to

that industry from this administration. So again, I mean, obviously Elon Musk is probably the most obvious because of Neuralink, which has had a lot of controversies over the amount of animals that died during their animal trials, for example. And if the FDA under Trump is very amenable to BCIs, we could see them potentially commercial, commercialized over the next four years. Because, again, that's something. Those are devices that have to undergo FDA approval to in order to go

on the market. But there's several companies that are farther along than Neuralink are. One of those is Blackrock Neurotech, which recently received a very significant investment from the stablecoin issuer tether, which has a lot of ties to Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce. And tether, of course, is also very much connected to rumble,

rumble. Of course, also tied to Howard Lutnick, also tied to JD Vance, the Vice President and Peter Thiel and their general counsel just became the number two guy at the CIA Michael Ellis. And then they're also connected to tether. Also invested really heavily in this firm called Satellogic, which is a satellite surveillance company that's involved in they're building the internet of forests, for example, for the purpose of turning each hectare of the Amazon into basically

like a token that you can buy. It sounds totally insane, but it's

chairman of the board. So it's interesting that you have people like musk doing sort of the satellite Digital finance and brain chip play, and you have tether basically replicating that play, and they both have significant ties to the government, and they would, you know, a lot of the companies in that web need government approval in order to get their products on the market. I don't know that seems like a

disturbing setup for Internet of bodies stuff going forward. And I think there's going to be a lot of different ways this stuff is sold to a reluctant audience, which would be Trump's base, I think, but probably not exclusively Trump space. I think there's plenty of people on the on the left that are not really interested in this, in this stuff, either. But I've already sort of seen people sort of in the the Trump supporting sphere say things like, mRNA is fine as long as there's no mandates and

sort of, kind of changing the the realm of the. Discussion a little bit already, or we can't hinder innovation. And a lot of the, of course, the Liberty worship of people like Elon, I think you know, you've had, there's people like Tim pool that have tweeted very supportively of Neuralink. Press

releases being like, Neuralink, let's go. So I mean, I mean, that's very possible we could see more of that, and then, I don't know, I don't know exactly how they're going to get people to use that stuff, but I think they won't have any problem getting it through FDA approval under this administration. Yeah.

this ever changing thing. And, I mean, and principal enemies, yeah, and basically the that seems to be the strategy for kind of everything that they want to do that is that that would normally be met with skepticism by the public. And it kind of tends to work. I mean, like, you know, when the internet was first coming out, it was recognized as a tool of

surveillance by the military industrial complex. And there was actually a lot of resistance that the military met when they were trying to utilize universities like MIT and other places to develop this stuff by the student body that was, you know, radical and anti war at the time, and now it's, you know, no one really cares. I was telling my friends about this center for forecasting and outbreak analytics piece that I

wrote for your website for Unlimited Hangout. And, you know, I told them, oh, well, it's this thing where the there's this apparatus between big healthcare and Silicon Valley, and they're trying to predict disease outbreaks before they occur, so that they can develop procured policy that's specified at certain communities to lock them down or and then my friend said, Isn't that a good thing? They'll

it. Basically, the Center for forecasting and outbreak analytics seems to be the office that is dedicated to carrying out what the CDC calls its common operating picture, where they want to create this consortium of academic, private sector and interagency partners, dedicated to constantly analyzing and collecting bio data to predict pandemic outbreaks and correspondingly prepare and respond for them when they happen or may happen, and the Center for forecasting

and out and and that strategy of doing that actually comes out from the total Information Awareness Program, which you've covered extensively you can probably get into, probably too

trial. I think, Well, I think Trump just pardoned them, actually. But up until recently, at least, they

to fuse those two things into one thing. And the way they'll probably do it, or the easiest way for them to manufacture consent for that, is what they tried to do with the 2001 anthrax attacks and and talk about bio terror. And, you know, there was a, there was sort of efforts to see these kind of narratives in early COVID. 19 Neo Nazis are licking doorknobs and giving people COVID That was literally like stories that were that happened. Those were real stories used to sort of fear

monger this type of stuff. And I think, you know, they may try, and you know, they're not a creative bunch. They like to recycle a lot of their narratives and their old playbooks. Look no further than the Sean Ryan show that and but I think people should be very cognizant of this stuff, because it's going to be framed as a win. They will say, Oh, we only have to lock down this community in that community, and not the whole country, and people that criticize the COVID response,

I'm sure many of them will applaud it. But the problem is, this was actually tested out during COVID 19 itself, basically the Israeli equivalent of Palantir, as it relates to COVID 19 response, and I say that in the context of Palantir

contracting contract with Operation warp speed. But the Israeli equivalent of that in the COVID 19 era was this firm called diagnostic robotics, and they were given a contract to basically predict COVID outbreaks in Rhode Island before they happen by then Governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, who later became Biden's Commerce Secretary, and this firm, if you believe their own numbers, they put out in like, their PR leaflets and stuff, say that their algorithm is 70 75%

accurate, and that's not audited, so we could assume that it's probably lower than what they publicly profess in their sales pitch. So maybe it's 60% maybe it's 50% but that's getting dangerously closer. In the case of 50% literally is the same as a coin toss. You're deciding to either shut down entire local economies based on algorithm that is not 100% accurate. So I would argue that isn't better. You're still taking away, um, people's civil liberties based on faulty data.

And if it's about, you know, using AI algorithms that aren't accurate either, and not totally racially biased. To be like this ethnic minority needs the shot, and this one doesn't, which is exactly what Palantir did under Operation warp speed. That's what their Tiberius program, literally was about, you know, the it definitely becomes very Orwellian, and so maybe it's not collective punishment, maybe in the same way as during the COVID

19 era. But this is ultimately this idea of sort of personalizing things, whether it's personalized COVID vaccines or personalized, localized pandemic response. This was the goal. And a lot of this stuff, as I noted, during the COVID era, you know, the antecedents of it were all sort of dreamt up and and first attempted, you know, in the immediate post 911 era. I don't know, it seems like a lot of those programs have not

gone away. And actually, you know, a lot of the total information awareness programs, they were specifically called Bio surveillance, and some of them included, you know, surveilling wastewater to prevent disease before it happens. And that was literally a program that was launched

during COVID in that Palantir runs. And I've argued in my work that Palantir is just the privatized version of total information awareness, because Peter Thiel and Alex carp went to the guy running total information awareness, and we're basically like, tell us what to do, because we want to make this a private company now that you're being defunded by

Congress, and then get all this money from the CIA. And the top people at the CIA that we're working on total information awareness with the DARPA people and John Poindexter become the main funders of Palantir with Peter Thiel. I mean, I don't know, but I should say, in the context of the PayPal presidency theme, that Palantir itself started off as the anti fraud algorithm at PayPal, and PayPal itself, as a company, started as

a concept. Sequence of its founders having extensive conversations with every three letter agency that would talk to them. That's according to PayPal co founder Max Levchin, so who gave a spirited defense of NSA warrantless spying in the Snowden era. So so much for that whole libertarian veneer of the PayPal crowd, but that's fine, and

experiences, where they aren't correct a lot of the time. I mean, just for example, how, like, even these chat bot ones are pretty inaccurate, are actually super inaccurate every time I've used them. You know, I so if, even if, the chat bots are inaccurate, I can't imagine how the disease forecasting ones are, but, but they

anyway. And I don't think you know a lot of what you brought up earlier about like Ellison saying, AI surveillance systems will have people be on their best behavior. The whole idea of the Panopticon and all of that is the idea that you know you're being watched constantly, but you don't know if you're being watched, so that induces obedience and, quote, unquote,

correct behavior. And so you know they could, you know, the idea that the algorithm is monitoring these things, even if it's not accurate, it can still, you know, have a lot of the same the same consequences, as long as people think it's accurate. And I think there's a lot of perception manipulation. I think that's pretty clear for the public, and a lot of it is

trying to manage how the public feels about it. And having these sort of AI surveillance systems is meant to sort of have that kind of panopticon effect, effect, I think, I don't think they're really in these applications really meant to work very much, you know, as an example, you know, like law enforcement use of AI in Britain, the Met Police had a contract with, I forget what company, but it was found to be

notoriously inaccurate. They were losing it for live facial recognitions of all sorts of public events in the UK, and it came out that it was like dismally, its accuracy was just dismal, and they made no effort to correct or change vendors. Why would that be? Because they don't care, right? I mean, because if they did care, they would obviously change vendors. There's no shortage of people selling that particular product. But the idea is that there's, you know, they're being watched.

But it's important to point out too that they're also very racially biased, which, you know, has, you know, I argued in my work in the COVID era, there was a lot of eugenics era people that have rebranded Bill Gates become kind of infamous as a

figure pushing policies analogous to that. And, you know, I think people should be pretty wary of that, especially when Palantir has evolved because of its history of racial bias and things like pre crime, which they call predictive policing, and also in warp speed, and also people like Peter Thiel and Alex carp like complete obsession with race stuff. Like Alex carp is, like, convinced that, like, white Americans are going to push him out of a high rise building

because he's half black and half Jewish. And he's like, I'm amazed I haven't been murdered by a different race yet. I don't think that sounds like a sane person that I want. Having this much power over our surveillance state and healthcare data, and that's going to have the power to segment populations and decide what, quote, unquote, medical interventions they're prescribed by the state in some sort of national level health event or whatever that's I mean, it's just, it's bonkers, man. I

feel like I'm ranting here though. I mean, there's so much we could cover, and I think we're getting close to the time we usually wrap this podcast up. But is there anything else you'd like to note on any of these fronts or any any any points or further reading you might want to recommend to viewers?

to us versus the way that it actually works. Because, because, I mean, you talk about how AI, I mean we, you just give perfect example of how AI does it has these hallucinations, these things, these, you know, insane inaccuracies in my own experience I have in my limited experience using these things. I remember I remember I talked to some friends. They were saying, Oh, my God, ChatGPT is amazing. You can ask it anything, and it gets it right every time. And I said, Are you Are you serious?

Every time I've asked it something, and I've fact checked that it gets it wrong almost every single time. Like, for example, the other day, I saw that Trump's new press secretary is named Karoline Leavitt. I was like, Huh? I wonder if she's related to Mike Leavitt. So I asked ChatGPT just to see what it would say. And I was like, yes, Mike Leavitt, Karoline Karoline Leavitt's Father, I looked it up. No, that's not true. I said, That's not true. Oh, sorry, it's actually his niece. That's not

true either. Oh, they're actually cousins, not true. So it kind of went wrong like five times in a row on this basic question, yeah.

as people who follow my work closely would would know. But I think the point here, whether you're an advocate or sort of a skeptic, is that a lot of the applications it's being pitched for at the law enforcement, national security level, and also in healthcare, the accuracy matters a lot there, especially because there's, you know, if they don't really necessarily give it human oversight, which in a lot of these cases, it's,

it's pretty minimal, I think. And as we're moving into the world of autonomous warfare and autonomous everything will probably become, you know, less human oversight as time goes on. I think people should be, you know, very wary of that, and know that that accuracy matters. And one thing I do want to add before we wrap up here, as it relates to mRNA, stuff likely coming on the market in significant numbers over the

next four years. If people want to push for something at the policy level that may actually end up happening, have products with mRNA in it be labeled, whether that's, you know, meat that has that was injected, the animal was injected with mRNA, why it was alive, like in the food supply or in the pharmaceutical system, I think people have a right to know, and so, you know, if we can't necessarily, you know, trust that it'll be kept the market, even with RFK in charge of HHS

or something like that, I think there should Be a I think it would be kind of practical to push to have informed consent, at the very least, about what products have mRNA or genetic material and which ones do not.

the center for forecasting and outbreak analytics. But, you know, I would say the big picture read of that is that it's the resurrection of the bio surveillance elements of total information awareness, and the entrenchment of it into a full center dedicated to carrying out this kind of bio surveillance to predict pandemics constantly the entrenchment of that into our current public health agency and private academic apparatus. It's

really resurrecting that and implementing it. And I think we'll see a concrete way eventually, and and, and it's going to. Yeah, and the reason that that's important it's pairing with total information awareness is because the data that it taps has a it's dual use, like so much of this stuff, like, like you just mentioned how AI might be useful for some

things. That might be true, but you have to look at the interest of the people that are implementing it and what they actually want to do, and what their incentives are and

ideologies are. And it just so happens that this bio surveillance data is just as useful for pre crime purposes, which Thiel, which, as you mentioned, Palantir and Alex carp and Peter Thiel just privatized as soon as Congress killed it, and so that's something to be wary of for anyone that might see this predictive health stuff as

beneficial, because I understand why it's enticing. Like I know someone that has an Apple watch, and their heart slowed down and it automatically called an ambulance for them, and they said that their Apple Watch saved their life, right? I see why it's enticing, but those dual use elements that are very apparent, if you look at the origins and the people involved, have to be considered. So that's all I'd say, great.

been rebranded. This is like a neoconservative agenda that really goes back to the Reagan era in terms of the idea of using, you know, this type of surveillance, and a lot of it, including the person that, you know, ran a total information awareness and is considered the godfather of modern surveillance, John Poindexter, he was one of the, actually the highest ranking member of the Reagan administration to be indicted as part of Iran Contra. And Iran Contra was trying to

develop a similar surveillance program for the for the purpose of clamping down on domestic dissent in the event of a vaguely defined national emergency and in the power of the state. This is not good. The government has been has misused this kind of power and this kind of data many times. To quote a former NSA and CIA director, Michael Hayden, we kill people

with metadata. People need to be very careful about what kind of data you're willingly going to surrender over to the government, and when you're allowing them, you know insight into what your internal body is doing. And also, in the case of your you know of the brain chip, what you're what you're thinking. And it doesn't even have to go as far as a brain chip anymore, if you believe any of the you know some of the sales pitches of technology currently being touted, but I

think we need to be really aware and cognizant. And, you know, it's someone for people that want to know the risks of this.

Actually, a big tech, beloved futurist you all know, a Harari, made it quite clear how this could easily lead to the end, what he calls the end of free will and authoritarianism that's just completely unprecedented, where the state can know, even if you're externally expressing one reaction to a policy or a politician, if you're internally showing a, you know, a negative response, they can, as he says, send you to the Gulag the next

Morning. That doesn't really sound very appealing to me, and not that it would happen overnight, but if we continue to be sort of coaxed into this, this complacency that all these big tech bros with ties to the national security state have our best interests at heart when they're actually, you know, sort of implementing these, you know, this kind of overtly neoconservative agenda, you know, I think there are definite dangers that come with that. So Max, where can people follow your work?